Judge Napolitano: Justice Obligated to Right Wrongs in Ferguson

Considering the years of racial bias in the Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department, the U.S. Justice Department is obligated to step in, Fox News Channel judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano says.

Following Attorney General Eric Holder's statement Wednesday on Justice's investigation that it has uncovered a pattern of racial targeting of blacks in an effort to produce revenue, Napolitano said the probe was long overdue.

"It's intense and it's scathing and it demonstrates a regular, consistent and systematic and long-term violation of the rights of the people of Ferguson based on the color of their skin," Napolitano said on Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith Reporting.

"One wonders, with sadness, why it took the death of Michael Brown for the feds to recognize this. This is so systemic, so deep, so ingrained in that community."

Justice conducted the federal civil rights probe following the shooting death in August of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by white police officer Darren Wilson.

A local grand jury declined to indict Wilson, and Holder said Justice's own probe found no evidence to indict him. But he said the protests that surrounded the original decision were based on the long-term bias in the police department and that the Brown case was simply a catalyst.

Napolitano said Justice's decision should not be seen as a political move by the Obama administration. The Justice Department is required under federal law to enforce the Constitution, he noted, and the 14th Amendment has been interpreted by the courts to remove race from the decision-making ability of government.

"So, when the local police make decisions to prosecute people or to harass them or to shake them down for money, which is basically what the attorney general is saying happened here, on the basis of race, and when they do this regularly, consistently and systematically, they have violated the 14th Amendment."